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Can you design a scenario where there isn't a skill shortage? If there were a million people with the required skill set living in an apartment building across the street from your business, and they were all willing to work for $30,000 a year, you would immediately add more requirements to the skill set, or you would offer them a salary of $29,000 a year, or both. If that didn't reduce the pool of qualified applicants enough, you would drop the salary further and up the requirements further until you had a small pool of qualified applicants. Then you would complain about the lack of qualified applicants.

"good software developers"

I'd be willing to bet that you require proof of this through a successful project or two. You're not hiring people out of college, and you don't have projects that can ramp up their skills to be what you want. So the people that you want have to be currently employed by someone else doing exactly what you want them to do. Tell me again why they want to work for you?

I have a B.S. in math. I have years of programming experience. I've passed a few actuarial exams. I drive a taxi for a living.

In Colorado, the state legislature did away with tenure for elementary-middle-high school teachers. You don't get to argue for more pay, since it's just based on your level of education (B.S or M.S), and # of hours you've taken above your last degree, but you can never have true job security.

Why would anyone do a job where any idiot parent can raise a stink over something stupid, and you get fired for it? Seriously, in Office Space, the main character had 8 bosses, and that was considered ridiculous. For the average teacher, they have 150 bosses, and the bosses change every year. You wonder why all the teachers that stay never do anything for fear of doing something that someone will find offensive.

A judge in New Mexico can have your Jersey license suspended. They undoubtedly will, and you'll find out about it in a few years when you get pulled over for something really minor and end up going to jail for driving with a suspended license.

"Might be the case that the easy credit allowed colleges to push up their tuition knowing students could take out loans"

This is exactly the case. Would you extend a loan to someone for $40,000 to allow them to get a job making $28,000 a year (instead of $24,000?). If you could charge them 7% interest and have it be guaranteed by the government (which means you take NO risk) you sure would.

The housing bubble happened because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would buy any home loan no matter how bad it was. So, as a bank, even though you know someone will never be able to afford the payments, you make the loan knowing you can sell it off immediately and make a profit with no risk. In fact, you'd be shirking your fiduciary responsibility to NOT make the loan, since it makes money for your bank.

I've seen what happens when drivers are not selfish. Two lanes approach a stoplight. Most of the traffic wants to turn right, and can do so even if the light is red, but the "not selfish" driver who doesn't pay attention to the fact that there's another lane (with no cars in it) ends up sitting at the front of the overly-full lane, stopping traffic flow.

The school where I taught math had a strong department of math teachers.

Algebra II was required. But it didn't mean anything. If a student can't pass the class, they just talk to their counselor, and get moved into a computer-math class, which doesn't require anywhere close to the same level of understanding.

The fact that a student can't (or won't) pass a particular math class will not prevent them from graduating high school. There are too many alternate paths.

I think it would be a very good thing if everyone DID understand the material in an Algebra II class, but I don't see it happening. Locally, at least 10% of the adult population never passed Algebra I.

I've seen it in use in computer-based classrooms for students that have failed in traditional settings. A student who struggles to learn can blame their failures on the teacher. Such a student will often behave in a manner counterproductive to their own success, just to have an affect on said teacher. You can't get a rise out of a computer, however. So you end up having to blame only yourself.

The original touch-screens ended up with a lot of lessons that accurately explained a large number of concepts. One of the problems with traditional textbooks is that they don't have a time axis. PLATO lessons can show you things as they happen, walking you through all the steps yourself. They can correct you along the way, so that you can learn to do the problems yourself. None of this is stuff that CAN'T be done with HTML and scripting, but PLATO came first, and did a really good job.

You can ask out a co-worker, or subordinate, as long as if they say "no", that's the end of it, and you don't pursue it. You're not creating a hostile work environment, or anything like that. It's just when there's a pattern of continued requests (even after rejections) that you expose yourself to winnable lawsuits.

The point of TRON:Legacy was the same as the original TRON: Wouldn't it be cool to actually BE inside the computer where you could interact in a meaningful and tactile way with computer programs (that weren't designed to have a 3D representation).

The graphics were nice, especially if you paid for the IMAX 3D experience. I thought they provided the same role as in Avatar: stun the audience into not noticing the plot.

The plot wasn't the point of TRON. The graphics, while nice, weren't the point of TRON. The idea of physically interacting with arbitrary computer programs directly was the point. It's "cool" and "neat" almost because it's impossible and ludicrous.